It's still very early but Arenado is starting to look pretty cooked. In zone contact rate way down, exit velocity way down, groundball rate way up. Just 40 plate appearances so I'm not dancing on his grave yet but does not look great.
The whole point of signing the best manager in the game was to make sure we have someone in the dugout constantly making good process-oriented decisions. He made a good one here unfortunately he got a bad dice roll.
Just looked it up because I was curious and Hernandez is even more of a lefty masher than I realized. This is his line against lefties the last three years:
.319/.351/.641
Wonder how deep the Dodgers let Yamamoto go. He's clearly in control now but those were two very high stress innings early. If he only goes 5 I feel good about getting to the Dodgers' bullpen.
Wicks' FB velo today is a smidge higher than his average from last year. Given that it's pretty cold today, it makes you feel better that his velo from Sunday (where he was up a full MPH) is real. Given everything else he does a full MPH is pretty transformational. Exciting stuff.
I think against Texas he looked pretty cooked while against the Dodgers he looked good but just not good enough to hold down their insanely loaded lineup.
Padres next time up should be a good test. Their lineup has some stars but also some holes, so he has opportunity to manage the lineup more holistically and like pick his battles.
In what is probably the hardest two week stretch of the season this was the also the most lopsided pitching matchup out of our favor and the team still put up 9 runs. This offense might be a big problem for the rest of the league.